Shadow
by sciguy007
Summary: Pokémon are more like humans than either realizes. We all have goals. We all have regrets. Everyone is running. But no one can escape their shadow. [original region][swearing][possible sexual references][violence]


[A/N] - Hey, so I kind of disappeared there for a while, sorry about that. To the three (3) people following this story, I guess thanks for that, though I imagine after a couple years you forgot you'd followed this slow-moving ship. Here's the new first chapter because I feel bad about not doing anything.

Just as a quick update, the reason nothing happened was because I wrote the story as if one set of events was going to happen, but it turned out that something else should happen. I really agonized over this decision, and when it comes up you'll hopefully know why. I'm hoping that I can start posting chapters here before the end of the year, which may seem unreasonable, but it's actually pretty quick for me, a guy who's never finished a long-form story, and definitely never finished a fanfiction. It's gonna be fairly long, I'm hoping to get to about 50 chapters, which will amount to about 150,000 words, assuming the story stays in this sort of format it's in right now. It may be longer, it may be slightly shorter, I'll know pretty much for sure in about May. I plan to start writing during the day instead of only between 12 and 4am. I'm not gonna ask anyone to review yet, but I'd still appreciate any corrections in my tone and phrasing in this tentative first chapter. If you see anything that doesn't make any sense let me know.

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Shadow, Chapter 1:

Fire

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Cold. The state of the environment was inescapable to most of the forests population, but particularly for one individual, the cold slunk underneath the skin, and brought pain to his muscles if he moved too fast. He supposed he's seen worse. He almost preferred this to the heat. But not when it was raining.

The fire rages on.

He stopped moving just long enough to look down at his neck, clutching in front of his heart, exhaling into his hands.

A hoarse voice sputters through the heat. There is no reply but the spitting of wood.

Several pidgey cocked their heads into the wind and looked up from preening as a lazy wind pushed by. After a short time, they made the decision to continue, nothing particularly interesting catching their attention. All they smelled was mud and rain. Pidgey have no reason to be paranoid, lacking natural predators. They mostly do the killing in their habitat, going after caterpie and weedle, and only ever need to worry about the occasional beedrill, which are not hunters by nature. Here, the pidgey were starving. The caterpie and berries were almost gone.

The group squawked and fled as one of its members was captured by the neck and pinned to the ground. A quick shake snapped its vertebrae, and it ceased to struggle. The predator shivers, the cold still bothering him.

The fire has burned long enough now that the sky has disappeared. For a few moments it shines through where the leaves once were, but the leaves have dissolved under the immense heat, leaving hissing skeletons in their wake. Soot replaced the clouds, only just darker than the burning grey of smoke.

In any decidious forest, the leaves act as a a barrier to precipitation, moving rainwater towards the trunk the of the trees and indirectly allowing pokémon below to ignore the water. In the dry season, apples begin to bloom, and by the time the cold season arrives, fruit has bloomed long enough that most of it has already been picked and stored by various rodent pokémon. But this forest had no leaves. Even though the strange needles stayed through the cold season, they offered little to help anything other than the trees they were attached to, not even bothering to stop the very common rain. _And_, thought the predator, _their persitance made predicting the cold season difficult, especially when it was already cold most of the time._

The heat is oppressing everything. Even the river is steaming under the forceful burn. The realization that death may be approaching starts to seep in.

The river sweeps away the fading life that has falling in, cradling it in a freezing embrace. While normally it could escape easily, it is too worn down to fight the current, simply allowing itself to be dragged away from the burning hell.

The predator sighed, drooping into his burrowed nook, high above the forest floor, but still below the canopy. As old and undisturbed as the forest is, many trees are to tall to see from the forest floor, or to climb in a short period. A shudder escaped him involuntarily as water dripped onto his feet and pooled in the middle of his dugout, too much pouring off of him for the tree to absorb it while already drinking the rain. The small size of the nook coupled with the excessive runoff sabotaged any dry surface. He sighed again and resigned himself to the damp confines, shaking himself to at least fluff his fur, however short it may be.

He built the feathers into a small pile beside himself, careful to get all of each one, before digging into the tough meat. He lamented their starvation. He chuckled darkly. If he thought he was hungry now, he knew it would only get worse. There were so many better sources of food. If he were bigger, or in a group, he would hunt sawsbuck. They could eat the needles, so they never starved, but they were too big to reasonably hunt alone. If they were around, he could hunt patrat. Patrat only ever ate berries, so the lack of bugs wouldn't affect them as much. He ground his teeth. At least pidgey tasted good. When the entire species wasn't starving. Which it was.

Not enough. Never enough. Not anymore. Not since the fire. The predator growled audibly without really meaning to, throwing the remaining bones into the rain. They hit the mud with a resonant smack. His ears flicked at the noise, displeased. He couldn't blame them. Everything had been lost or ruined in a single day. Picking a direction, he hoped his eyes were pointed the right way.

The hazy distance reminded him of smoke.

He turned to face inside his hole, the rain still pounding the outside, but now out of view. He gave his thanks that he could at least avoid the droplets of rain, even if wasn't completely dry. _Yet_, he thought, _I always go outside anyway_. The dugout ended up being useless anyway. It could only grant the opportunity to be dry, should he choose to starve himself.

He knew that too much water would drown even the trees. Trees near rives leaned and eventually fell in. But after a fire, a river is the only thing that doesn't disappear. Water can't be burned. It just evaporates and falls back down later. Other things evaporate, too, returning eventually.

Ash is falling now, like snow. Returning everything the fire borrowed back to the ground.

He gripped at his chest again, hanging his head between his knees. He cocked his arm behind his head, as if to throw something, but only dropped his hand back into his lap.

Despite the tree protecting him from the rain, little droplets began to fall.

In the defiant light of morning, the rain had refused to stop. The only thing the rising sun had accomplished was removing the thin fog that had seeped in overnight. The clouds had stayed thick enough to prevent any warmth from spreading.

Two figures wandered into the unmoving forest, moving quietly though the mud.

"It's cold," mumbled one of them, a lucario.

"Hush," came the reply of the other, a teenaged boy. "Don't scare anything." The first speaker grumbled to herself, muttering something about mew hunts and chasing wild spearow. She rubbed at her nose, sniffing lightly. The boy leaned in to whisper, "We're looking for a tree burrow. If you see one, let me know."

"I know what we're doing. But you're looking for an extinct species. There are no wild zoroark left."

"Don't you start, now. I heard enough of that from the last town." He adjusted his jacket, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "But you're right. It is cold." His eyes widened as her paw pressed against his mouth.

"Shh," she beckoned.

"I just hushed you, now you hush me?"

"Shut up!" She breathed. "I smell something."

He furrowed his eyebrows and nodded briskly in understanding. Out from one of his many pockets came a red and white device meant for the capture of wild animals. A poké ball.

An aura sphere tore through the air and shattered a branch ahead of them. The forest fell silent, and for several seconds, nothing moved.

The boy stood up and put the ball back into his pocket. "Now that everything knows we're here, we might as well move a little faster."

The echoing snap alerted one of the forest pokémon to something dangerous happening outside. Lighting? He'd closed his eyes, so now he was unable to discern whether or not there had been a flash. He mentally berated himself for not paying attention.

He poked his head into the rain to check for any lights. Satisfied nothing was on fire, he ducked back inside and chew on his pidgey bones._ I like pidgey_, he thought to himself. _I like pidgey_.

"I don't know what you expect to find here," the lucario griped.

"As if you don't know, you already said it. The townspeople say there's a zoroark in here." He put his hood down, revealing dirty brown hair reminiscent of an eevee needing a trim.

"The townspeople are drunk. They don't know what they're saying."

"All I know is they're saying they see lights leading into the forest at night. That's one of two things. One: Litwick are doing their creepy will-o-wisp death march, which I doubt because of the cold, or two: there's a zoroark playing with the townspeople. No one's gone missing, which is another strike against the litwick."

"Three: the townspeople are all drunk and seeing things. If you're going to be my trainer, you've got to be more logical than you're being right now."

"If you're going to be my pokémon, you need to listen to me anyway." The lucario sighed. "Besides," the boy continued, "isn't training not always about logic? Isn't that what Red used to say?"

"Red was a crazy old man living on a mountain."

"And the greatest trainer alive. Tell me you've seen another pikachu beat a legendary."

She threw her paws into the air before gesturing pointedly at the boy. "There never was a legendary! People made those up! A pokémon that created the universe? What created it? What gave birth to it?"

"I think the point was that nothing gave birth to it," the boy postulated. "Even so, it definitely beat a dragonite. There's film of that. I saw it on TV."

"I saw it on TV. You watched the internet videos."

"My point still stands. That thing was rated at a 9.3 in that battle. That is way too high for a pikachu. The next highest rating was, what, a six?"

The forest dweller heard voices. Voices he didn't like. Voices not speaking in common tongue, which could only be one thing.

A trainer.

He knew enough, at least, to know there probably wasn't more than one, but he didn't particularly want to check, in case he was seen. He didn't know if they were looking for him, specifically, but he was sure if they saw him they would try to catch him. He'd prefer not to gallivant around the region, catching other wild pokémon and getting into fights over little pieces of metal, constantly struggling to prove that he was worth keeping, lest he be dropped into some part of the world he'd never seen before, only to starve to death or be killed by pokémon stronger than him. As much as being wild was a constant struggle, he preferred it to a struggle he'd never had before.

_Wait, _he thought. _Where did the noise go?_

A brief scream entered his den before a bright flash splintered the bark around the entrance, knocking down the tree above his den. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, ears ringing, and stumbled, nearly falling off the tree.

"Did you hit him?" the boy asked.

"No, he would faint." His ears perked. He knew that voice.

"We could wake him up." Was that Ben?

His vision cleared and looked down to see the duo staring back up at him. He tried to focus on the lucario, but she fired another aura sphere just beneath him, sending more splinters into the air. His veins burned with adrenaline under the threat of capture, and he fled the area, the boy staring at where he used to be.

"Did you see that?" he asked the lucario, eyes wide and barely able to contain his excitement. "He ran in every direction at once! Do you know what this means?"

The lucario nodded, more surprised than excited, but starting to feel the contagious emotion. "It's a zoroark."

The zoroark jumped from tree to tree, the branches growing together closely enough that he didn't really have to jump all that far, instead just taking a longer stride. He was sure he knew the lucario. He clutched at his chest, lungs burning. _How did she get here?_ he wondered. He was almost certain he'd never see her again.

His foot slipped as his focus stumbled, ruining his jump to the next tree. He tried to catch himself as he fell, hitting a branch with his shin before smacking into the ground. Once he could breathe again, he dragged himself behind a trunk, cursing steadily, and hoping he wouldn't be seen as they passed him. He closed his eyes in a wince as he held his leg. He tried to fight his growing concern that it was broken, realizing it was a losing battle.

"Hello," said someone in front of him.

His eyes snapped open and he came face to face with a venipede. "What do you want?" he responded.

The venipede smiled, in the way venipede try to. His antennae danced jovially. "I didn't honestly expect to see you here. I thought it would take more walking to find you." He looked around. "Where is your lucario friend." The zoroark glared. "I see. So sad to hear of her death, she was an inspiration to us all. A great role model, really. Too bad for you, she isn't here to stop me anymore." He quickly turned around and jammed one of his tail spikes into the zoroark's leg, earning a pained cry.

The zoroark attempted to retaliate, but the venipede easily dodged out of the way of his claws. "Now, now, be careful. You could hurt someone with those. They're like knives."

Branches snapped as a blue pokémon ran by.

The venipede panicked. "You said she was dead!"

The zoroark didn't waste the opportunity, grabbing the venipede by what was effectively its neck, the exoskeletal joint between its body and head. "I didn't say anything," he growled, separating the venipede's head from its body. He gagged as the body continued squirming despite its decapitation. No, he realized, it wasn't just that. He pulled the spike out of his leg, a strand of goo leaving it connected. Poison.

His breathing began to accelerate and deepen as he received another shot of adrenaline. If nothing helped him, he would likely die. If not from poison, then from the crippling he'd received for his own stupidity. He berated himself and cursed in his head, not wanting to do what he knew he had to do to survive.

Leaning over, he grabbed the biggest branch he could see near him, slamming it into the trunk of the tree he was leaning on, and snapping it in two. He hoped it was loud enough, since he couldn't really hear anything over the pulsing in his ears.

Nothing in his vision moved. He cursed again, falling over. Without trying to, he started breathing slower. He could no longer feel the stinging in his leg. He was dying. _So it will be the poison_, he thought, closing his eyes. _Figures._

He had only closed them for a few short seconds before he was roused by something shaking him. The lucario tried to get him awake.

"Don't fall asleep," she ordered. "Stay awake."

He moaned quietly, squinting his eyes. "Lithium?" he asked. He felt something hit him in the side before he was finally sucked into the blackness, and the pain stopped.

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[A/N] - I promise I won't be this aggressive with author's notes in future chapters, or when the thing actually gets posted for real, but I just wanted to briefly cover the changes made so far for my own sake.

-changed perspective to third person  
-condensed events to move into the actual plot faster, yet made chapter almost 1,000 words longer  
-the trainer boy (whose name you don't yet know) and the lucario (whose name you don't yet know) make an appearance and have personalities  
-the zoroark gets caught  
-hints at important details actually exist now


End file.
